Please Don't Love Me
by Smoking Girl
Summary: People know when something goes wrong. Somewhere deep inside of them, hidden beneath all the junk thrown in there from inside and outside, the place where regret should grow exists. And everyone has them, the smaller and the taller, why not this time?
1. My Dreams Take Me Strange Places

Sleeping is always a problem.

No, really, there's nothing to discuss about that, sleeping is a problem. Dot. Big fat ending-**dot**.

A bed is either too hard or too soft, and so are pillows. Of course I won't start bringing the issue of pillows up now, those are extraordinarily strange: a personality question, not showing how the person thinks like everyone seems to believe (if it's soft the person's sensible etc. etc. etc.) but— through scientists approved, and confirmed facts—we know that it actually shows which tea the person in question prefers.

Of course that doesn't really have anything to do with sleeping, and it hardly makes any sense, but as a matter of fact, by looking at a certain pink-haired kunoichi's pillow we found out that through a rather weird coincidence she likes the same tea as a certain silver-haired shinobi.

This shinobi's pillow does not, through another strange coincidence, at all match with his choice of tea, but that is a completely other story, involving torture, death, romances, non-romances, hatred, donkeys, and being forced to drink the tea that was your favourite before so many times that it becomes an incredible dislike. And of course the fact that the shinobi in question isn't particularily normal.

Shakespeare said about sleep: "Oh sleep, oh gentle sleep. Nature's soft nurse."

Which was quiet right.

Wikipedia has this much to say about it. Of course, Wikipedia has a lot more to say about everything, but I supposed I would make this story only half as exiting if I added it.

"**Sleep**," it says, "is a natural state of bodily rest, also observed throughout the animal kingdom. It is common to all mammals and birds, and is also seen in many reptiles, amphibians and fish. In humans, other mammals, and a substantial majority of other animals which have been studied — such as fish, birds, ants, and fruit-flies — regular sleep is essential for survival. However, its purposes are only partly clear and are the subject of intense research."

Which once again proves that the philosophers got it right from the beginning, only put it into words normal people could understand.

Sleep, I say, is a problem to most people. It is, like almost everything in this life, often tightly connected with love. This is because sleep is tightly connected to the brain, and brain is tightly connected to this heart-fluttering, painful love that makes up a great part of our lives. Greater than we actually realize.

Man's obsession, okay not so much man's, but woman's obsession and fantasy of love is central in our experience of life.

Those of us who are not in a relationship often dream about being in one; those of us who are often dream about not being in one, which brings on a series of haunting dreams and even nightmares.

Everyone has them, except for the newly in-love ones. Whom everyone, by the way, envies.

Sakura was not one of those. She had known the, milder at times and coming in periods, but still haunting pain of being love for a long time. She just hadn't realized that the one she was in love with, wasn't the person she loved.


	2. The Picture of a Girl

More than she was a kunoichi, a good one, a medic, the best just after Tsunade in Konoha, 17 years old and beautiful, she still was a girl. Just a girl.

She couldn't do the impossible, she wasn't super hyper-smart, and let's face it, being a genius in brains is overrated. Easily outdone by charm and a warm smile.

So, despite being everything a simple girl could want to be, she was still held back by that small _'girl'_ which made her human.

Humans are not a very exiting topic; their behaviour and species are near to boring. They are not smart, not beautiful, not mysterious in any way, even though they like to believe so themselves (making up tales about magic and hidden treasures, which, to end the discussion, were not even buried by humans). They have only about 6 800 languages on their Earth, while animals have a billion more. I guess technically that could be why there are so many obsessed with animals, so much better than this despicable race.

But at least it isn't quite un-useful; it is somewhat of a useful excuse, being human. It is perhaps also for this reason that there have been at least written 3 songs about being alone, poor and human.

Right, that was what I was searching for… a catchword.

Humans are mostly not over the height of a mere 1.90 metres, their heads are only about 1.60 metres from the ground. No, we are not giants. We can't see each other from a distance of 14 kilometres, and we can't walk around the world in only 100 steps. That is maybe why not everyone will find their soulmate: we can't see each other through the crowd, and we wont find the one person we search for in a lifetime. Unless we're incredibly lucky.

I will let you continue the story now.

Her eyelids were still heavy with sleep when she opened them. Mostly she woke up quickly and got up from her bed with a spark, but today her bed seemed warmer than ever. And she was only human.

She had always had bad blood-circulation, and her hands and feet were often cold. She needed about three-four blankets to keep the little warmth her body gave to herself over the night. And she was only human.

Also she seemed to have a bit of a headache. And she was only human.

She stretched her arms up against the window just above her bed in a small yawn. She was never going to drink again. She swore. But she was only human.

She couldn't handle even a tiny glass of alcohol, they always joked about wanting to try giving her sip for sip to see how long it took until she fell from her chair. At least finally they realized it wasn't very funny very long. The game usually just lasted a few minutes, answering to about five sips.

Of course she didn't really pass out when she fell from the chair, she just had a few complications with her very bad balance, at that point. Not to mention the fact that she got a bit clingy around other people when she was drunk, especially someone like Shikamaru. Who would sit in a corner hoping not to be seen until she _fell_ her way over there because he was the only one she could hold onto, so she didn't fall, who didn't have the energy to push her away.

She felt really sorry for him sometimes when she began talking about how previous boyfriends had broken her heart with her arms wrapped around his stomach, babbling away in some self-centred blast that would make any other man want to throw up.

Shikamaru just didn't seem to mind. Even in she began crying on him. He really was a great friend when you needed him. She furrowed her brow a second in a thought she hadn't really known could be thought. This was how it looked: _or else he was just a very bad and uncaring one._

She just lay there with her eyes closed and her lips formed in a small smile, just letting her body flood over in the warmth of the blankets.

Yeah, now she just needed a big warm mug of coffee, and a bit less of a headache.

She turned around, still swimming in the warm bliss of comfort, and wrapped her arms casually around the soft thing.

It took her another second to realize what exactly the soft thing was, and exactly at that time it also moved. She kept her eyes closed hard, furiously trying to remember who in all hell it could be. She didn't remember any man and she really doubted she had gone home with any woman since last time at the pub she had proclaimed loudly, on a table, that she was totally straight, and if anyone had forgotten that she hoped they were already on the list to get a donated brain.

That had been freakin' embarrassing.

Also because, by a weird coincidence, obviously caused by a telling-around-it-to-everyone-aunt Ino, half the jonins AND Tsunade knew it the morning after.

Mentally she slapped herself because she had begun thinking about something else. She should really stop drinking, a hangover just didn't suit her.

Obviously there was no clue whatsoever in her brain of meeting a guy, other than possibly Shikamaru. She really hoped it wasn't Shikamaru, partly because she could not, however much she tried, picture him having sex. And she should really stop clinging on him like that, people would start see it the wrong way.

Whoever it was moved again, and she pressed her eyelids harder together as if it could help by trying not to wake him. At least her hangover let her assume it was a 'him' now.

Then he wrapped an arm around her, making her sigh at the beautiful warmth, but also feel awfully scared.

_Okay, she had gone to the pub with Ino right? What then? She had gone to get herself a drink and then… She went back… To Ino. No guy. Wait, there was something…_

The arm wrapped a little tighter around her waist and she could also feel a warm breath against her chin, and some hair tickling her nose.

_It had to be someone with long hair_. She was still desperately hoping it was not a girl.

_T__hen Ino had said something about someone… no that wasn't important, she did that all the time… and then Sakura had spotted someone in the corner of her eye… Shikamaru._ She really was desperately hoping it wasn't Shikamaru.

_But he had run hadn't he? He had gotten his lazy lame stupid fucking ass up to run from her.__ Even if he was too fucking lazy to do anything else he still had the energy to run away from HER. He didn't know people didn't do that. For an obvious reason. But still, he didn't really care she assumed, he was still Shikamaru._

_That was what had happened, right? _

_She was going to punish him for tha__t still though. It was probably his fault she was in this situation now. _

Having nothing else to go by she slowly opened one eye to peek. She quickly closed it again. Whoever it was, he was close. She slowly opened it again, finding herself looking into a unique handsome face.

She just didn't know him.

_~*~_

Her eyes kept going over the face again and again, trying to find some spot on it she could recognize. She just couldn't believe she had gone home with a complete stranger.

It wasn't like her in any way, she didn't do that, she was the girl who held on to Shikamaru the whole night so she wasn't forced to meet boys. Of course, she didn't know that was why, but it was.

Making some weird noise that existed somewhere in between a growl and a very strange sigh the man cracked one eye open.

He thoughts froze when she saw it, then they began circulating around just the one thing: it was red.

She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed the scar, she obviously had a worse hangover than she had realized. It was scary; she was staring right into the pretty, un-masked face of Kakashi-sensei.

_~*~_

As fast as it was humanly possible she stumbled backwards out of the bed, trying to remember how to balance on two feet. She backed, and mostly fell, backwards until she was pressed against the wall, staring incredibly at the man on the bed. Her tongue seemed to make a three-double backward-somersault before she could fill the gaping mouth with words that rather fell over each other like a pretty little harmonica.

"Shit fucking bloody hell! Freakin mother of holy God!" she exclaimed.

Had they had sex? Of course they had, he had been lying beside her for God's sake!

She felt like she had had sex. She couldn't do anything but stare at the man, not even noticing her headache.

"Shit—You, what are you—fuck—WHAT are you doing here?" she asked, holding her hands calmingly, also because of a certain hangover, on each side of the face.

Suddenly she understood that he wasn't actually looking at her. Well, yes of course he was looking at her, but he wasn't awake, she was sure it was something all sharingan carriers did when they heard a suspicious sound. It was just to assure there was no danger present, but the signal didn't go _into _the brain like it did normally. More like a reflex.

"Holy God—" she sighed.

What was she going to do??

She slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible on the creaking floor, began to walk towards what she knew was the door even though it looked more like something snake-formed.

She changed her mind, turned around and more or less threw herself down on the floor, with her eagle-eyes up to search for condoms under the bed.

She didn't know if it was good or bad that there weren't any. At least it didn't make her any wiser.

She stood up again, but slowly, cursing herself in whispers for drinking. She slowly got up, continuing her quest towards the door. She sighed with relief when she could finally close it behind her.

Why hadn't Shikamaru helped her? It mostly was Ino's fault though, after all she had forced her to go out, and to wear her red dress. She gasped and ripped it into her grasp when she saw it neatly lying over a chair.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" She stared in something that looked rather like defeat at the floor. "What the hell is this?" Had he taken that off her?

She sat down and stared out in space, wondering quietly what the hell she was supposed to do, when it suddenly came incredibly clearly into her mind. Without one more second's thought she wrapped her thick long coat around her pink-pyjamas (with hearts) covered body, drew on her red wellies and ran however fast it was humanly possibly out into the pouring rain. Only thinking about getting as far away from the apartment as she could.

_~*~_

Even if you are so incredibly into-hell lucky and actually find the right one, the right jam to your porridge, the balance to your temperament, the sun in your fantasy garden, the final piece to the puzzle, the knight on the annoyingly white horse, the one and only you are looking for, you still wont know it really _is_ the one you're looking for.

After all it isn't all about being tall.

A little pink haired kunoichi was running her legs off her through the rain, slipping on each third step, the first tears already stinging in her perfectly green eyes. She had never been so confused and scared and stupid and hopeful that it all was just a dream.

Then again, she was only human.


	3. Irony For Dummies

He shouldn't drink, and he hadn't since he was 20, until now. Yesterday, more precisely. Because Kakashi was always precise now. He hadn't always been, but since the day he understood that he was actually on his way to becoming an elite ninja, he had finally killed his sloppy and lackadaisical mind, and had really turned around.

Even if he was always late, even if he seemed miles away, even if he never answered a question right or seemed not to care what happened around him, and seemed thoroughly lost to the world, he still had all that planned.

He knew where he had to be every minute, and he knew it well. He remembered travel-hours and delay time like no other. Maybe it was just because he was so thorough he didn't seem thorough anymore.

Irony is a very interesting matter, by the way.

The more educated people say something like this;

"In modern usage, it can refer to incongruity between the intended meaning of an action and the actual or perceived meaning of an action."

Naturally people only explain it as: "Say one thing, mean something else."

Trying to explain it is rather complicated too, some have tried, some have failed, but people mostly don't realize because they don't have half those people's brains, and then also they tend to use irony.

Which can only be described as ironic.

"Any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same."

I'm sorry. I can't explain it to you. I can't tell you when something is ironic and when it is not. I just know it has something to do with conditions. During the war, for example, Genma said: "Oh my God I miss war so much." Which was ironical then, but isn't now.

It is something, set into opposition with something else. That, however, is sadly a very broad expression, and can be said as much about starving children, as a fat John Travolta.

Which is quite ironic too.

What does it mean that something is ironic? If it is ironic that Kakashi stopped drinking at 20 and would begin to drink again at 30 because his father did exactly the same thing, what does it mean?

That it is wrong? That it is strange? That it is a thing coming back, like kind of… flash-back jokes, or if you would call it, boomerang jokes? Something going around and touch another thing, connected to another matter that everyone knows?

At least irony has something to do with humor.

"Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment"

Also maybe an attempt of being funny while insulting someone.

Irony, has a greater history though, the word comes from the Eirona, a comedic character who succeeded by bringing his braggart opponent, the alazon, down by making himself seem like less than he actually was, which also written over by Aristotle.

Kakashi didn't try to make himself seem less than he was, he just seemed to be anyway. Which is also kind of ironic.

Which is also kind of funny.

***

At first he hadn't known where he was, a white ceiling was quite natural for all homes. Of course not his, which was some strange purple shade, so at least he had known he wasn't home. And then the hangover.

He just couldn't ever imagine he would find himself at Sakura's apartment.

"Oh my God what did I do?" he asked himself quietly, sitting there at the bar again, not even reading his favourite book. He growled and buried his face in his hands. What did they do? What had he been thinking about, getting drunk when he knew she and the other small ones were nearby?

They should be at home sleeping for the next day, like real kids. Kakasahi knew deep down inside they weren't kids anymore, but he wanted them to be. For a good long time more.

When he had realized Sakura wasn't there, he had just gone straight to the bar. He didn't have anywhere else to be, except for training the new kids, but they could wait. He wasn't even two hours late yet. And he needed to think. He _needed_ to remember. And he needed to talk to Sakura, he should as an adult, a teacher… he growled again, and it seemed the headache was punishing him too.

_Shit._

"So who is the lucky one?"

A bit sleepily he turned around, finding the senbon-chewing Genma at his side with an early beer. Or was it a very late one?

"Hm?"

"I figured since you look like you've been hit by 12 cars and that you have for once taken a stronger drink than your usual water," Kakashi looked down on his orange-juice as if he had only just realized it was there, " and seriously, if we do not count your little fling last night really I've only seen that once or twice when you'd got girl-troubles."

He paused a minute to take a swig of beer.

"So who's the lucky one?"

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at Genma. "Yeah, right, why was it again that you didn't take away my drink?" It was not like he didn't know that Kakasahi didn't drink or anything. He suspected Genma was only old and he should also have his fun.

_O__ld. That is such a heavy word. So is thirty._

"Nah, you know, you're old, you should have your fun."

Kakashi just growled in response. Then drank his juice in a quick gulp and began to walk towards the door. Genma was right. Next time he should probably just drink water.

"Hey 'Kashi, you didn't tell, what was her name again? Wait it wasn't a 'he', right? Because I think Gai might be jealous…" _Hahaha. _Sadly Genma was rather often less funny than he thought he was. "It wasn't Anko right?" Kakashi just looked at him with a tired gaze. "Or Tsunade?" He laughed. "I mean, she could kick your ass out of Konoha for taking advantage…"

Kakashi just shook his head, as if to a child that had just made up his 'what-I-want-for-Christmas-list'. _When was Christmas anyway?_

_Maybe it had already passed?_

_Which month was it?_

_He knew it was Saturday. He didn't know what time. He didn't know… _Quickly he glanced up at the sky. _He knew roughly what time of the day it was._

He needed to find Sakura.

"Wait." Genma stopped, making Kakashi looked puzzled back at him. "You didn't sleep with that gorgeous brunette did you?" The silver-haired man only shrugged.

"That was you Genma," Kakashi then remembered, making the other jonin furrow his brow. "You know, mirrors?"

Genma still tapped his finger against his chin in confusion, murmuring something that sounded like: "but didn't I kiss her?"

***

Sakura stared at the ground before her shoes.

She didn't want to go inside the hospital and pretend like she was fine just now. Maybe she shouldn't have run. Maybe she should have talked with him. She wasn't sure if they would have found much intelligent to say anyway, taking into account they probably both had ultimate hangovers and she couldn't remember a thing.

She massaged her temples with an annoyed expression and pushed the swinginto motion again.

The hospital playground was a good place to think since there never was anyone here. Children in the hospital were signed out as fast as possible, and other children didn't go somewhere near the hospital to play unless they were injured. Still there was an amount of trees, cutting the hospital-area off from the playground so she could sit and still not be seen by bossy Tsunade or anyone on the street.

Sometimes in their, not official, summertime long breaks (which tended to be very long at times, letting the stand-in doctors unwillingly get some more done, which they, by the way, never did anyway) they would all go here to drink something or let out secrets and gossip that wasn't to spread too fast, like it did in the hospital.

Not that Sakura was such a fan of gossip and everything else those nurses talked about, she wasn't even sure she knew how to talk to those kind of girls anymore, she didn't know what interested them. Her other friends were mostly jonins, and only communicable through talking of matters like "what weapon do you like most?" But she at least liked the playground. And the long-breaks. Also because she didn't like her own stand-in. She deserved to be stood up.

But now, in this part of the year the playground was empty and grey. And the only ones that ever came were such as old bitter men who let their dogs piss here, or silly things like her who came to think.

"What the hell was I thinking of?"

The question seemed to linger a bit longer in the fresh October air.

"I'm just so damn smart, am I not? So damn good at handling alcohol, so damn mature. So damn incredible."

She tried once again to go over the night's events in her head, but she could only remember a faint image of seeing Kakashi out of the corner of her eye. And then turning back to Ino. She didn't go over there, did she? She didn't even drink that much and still everything messed up. It was what she did. Her 'thing'.

"How can I ever look him in the eye again?" _Oh my God. She slept with he ex-sensei. _She let herself fall backwards down on the cold sand. _She slept with Kakashi. She fucking slept with him! Sensei, the copy-ninja, the one and only. And obviously no one had stopped it._

_She really slept with Kakashi. _The_ Kakashi._

Feeling the headache return she buried her face in her hands, trying to calm the heat sticking behind her eyelids. She was 17. She was mature enough not to cry.

She was mature enough to know she was going to.

She let herself fall backwards off the swing, and her back hit the ground with a dump sound.

For a while she just lay there, enjoying the feeling of dust-sized raindrops cleaning her face, while gazing up at the grey, afternoon-colored sky, desperately trying not to think of the fact that her pink hair was spread out over, and her body lying on, potential dog-piss.

She was starting to feel a little cold.

"Yo… So that's like your hobby or something?"

Sakura closed her eyes, not looking up at the man standing before her. She knew that voice too well. Though she also knew that she couldn't ignore him forever. At some point she had to talk with him. She had just hoped it wouldn't be now.

"Right, you're playing that game. That's okay, I can do that," he said light-heartedly, lying down beside her with his book in his hands. He opened it somewhere in the middle and then it turned quiet again.

Sakura knew he wasn't reading. He didn't flick the page, he never did. Not around her at least. She was pretty sure she saw him read it while training Sasuke for the ANBU exams, also in battle against Lee and Gai-sensei, but never around her.

It always made her wonder what he was doing. He didn't look at her, he didn't look at anything else, he didn't say anything. He occasionally wouldn't even breath until she told him to, he just stared at that book.

It drove her crazy. He drove her crazy. She didn't know where to place him, what to place him as. He was the annoyingly annoying undefinable, un-placeable, free-flying bird in her mind, appearing places he didn't belong, doing things he shouldn't do, and she couldn't even put a finger on why she couldn't put a finger on it.

He wouldn't like being compared to birds. Although he was really like them, somehow… Maybe a … a… something really eye-catching, and also kind of intelligent and weird…

"Sakura, stop comparing me to crows."

She sat up, widening her eyes at the man. Also he would occasionally do _that_, reading her mind as if it was one of his Itcha-Itcha books. It wasn't normal, it wasn't ninja, it was just scary.

"What? How do you—"

"Wasn't talking to you. Just reading aloud from my book."

She furrowed her brow. He also lied often. Incredibly often taking into account he always swore he hadn't done it once in his life. She knew he read her mind somehow, she just couldn't figure out how. His sharingan couldn't read minds, and it wasn't even exposed.

He wasn't psychic. Though if he was, that would only be another unsurprising thing.

He continued to read his book, his expression still like a mask, apart from the mask he was already wearing, and his lone black eye not giving away any thoughts at all. His silver-hair was spread over the sandy ground.

He wasn't what she expected, he always made her think she could out think him, but then he surprised her, confused her, with something all new. He was so erratic. She could never know what he was thinking, she could never know if he was so full of contradicts because he just was, or because he made her think he was.

"There isn't anyone in your book called Sakura."

"Of course there is."

Suddenly he packed his book away and sat up too, looking at her with a serious expression.

"I think we need to talk."

Sakura still tried to avoid his gaze, and partly out of fear, partly out of embarrassment she stood up and began walking towards the entrance of the playground. She didn't want to talk with him.

Yes, she did, she just didn't realize because she was too stubborn and scared, like most people when they have done something they can't remember, or even imagine.

"Sakura," he shouted after her. But she didn't turn around She wanted to go home. She wanted to lock her door and clean everything up, no, she wanted to buy a new apartment and get herself a fresh start. She didn't want to shift the sheets, she didn't want to put her red dress back into the wardrobe. She didn't want to try to remember. She didn't want it to have happened.

Although she had always been in love with her sensei, she didn't want it to have happened this way, if at all. She couldn't relate to her crush on him, how important it really was, if it was more than just excitement.

She couldn't even relate to her sensei.

She needed to know how to understand him, understand herself before she could even know how to speak to him. She needed to find out why this happened. First of all, she needed time.

And a less intense headache.

**

Irony doesn't mean you don't have to try find what's behind; make irony out of the important and unimportant questions in life, but it doesn't mean you understand them. It doesn't mean you don't have to go on someday and work the bones out of you to try.

Question irony and get a headache. This isn't a mathematic rule you know how to put right, this is the one of the smallest corners of the human being's outworn, torn apart, labyrinthed mind.

Understand the question. That's where you start.

**

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?

If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

**Barry Lopez**, _Arctic Dreams_


	4. The Chapter Meant To Be Jumped Over

Even if they would never admitted it, the whole scene on the hospital's rooftop, the first real battle (and know there has been many) about life and death between Sasuke and Naruto had meant a lot.

And even if they didn't say it openly it had changed a lot. It had changed it all.

Also it was a thing they didn't realize was happening at the time.

Even though Sasuke left after that, and that seemed a bigger thing for them all, it wasn't a bigger thing than the battle. Naruto had never been the same, and even though Sasuke's departure improved Naruto's spirit in a strange way, it didn't improve Sasuke's, and it didn't change Sasuke the way destiny might have meant it to.

Because it was the first time they understood that the group wouldn't be whole forever, it also changed Sakura, and even the silver-haired jonin who was claimed responsibility for it all later on.

It changed them all.

Sakura didn't just know this because Sasuke had left, and not just because Naruto refused to battle him for real ever again, and not because the group never became the same again. It was because she saw Kakashi put himself on her side in some way, helping her, not placing himself on either side of the two furious young ninjas, but between, with her; she knew that that was the end of life as she knew it.

She understood that this was the chapter in the story where the most beloved friends were supposed to die. They just didn't. But to each other they might as well have.

She couldn't have known how much this would show later.

Naruto claimed it was because she was his favourite student, always remembering everything, and being a healer. But Sakura directly wrote this off, because honestly, everyone knew that Sasuke was Kakashi's favourite student.

But it wasn't that Kakashi had saved her from being crushed, following her own choice to stop them between the two great jutsus, it wasn't that he had pat her shoulder afterwards and told her it was going to get back to normal soon.

It was because she somehow knew that he chose to split the group.

And she could call it destiny, or coincidence, but she couldn't help wondering what would have happened if he hadn't been there. If he had done something else. If it hadn't turned out that he and she became "all that was left" of the group. For Kakashi and Sakura had never been a group—they might have been part of the group as two different individuals but they had never been "together".

How can you explain that?

That they were friends without being friends, that they had known each other a long time without knowing each other? That they were part of team 7 but that they hadn't noticed the group had been parted from the beginning because Naruto and Sasuke had been tight, and then they had just been there, alone, looking awkwardly at each other. Naruto had been the glue that kept them together.

It wasn't that it mattered now.

It was that Sakura could see how all of their eyes had a new spark in them. Maybe it was something as absurd as determination, or destiny, but whatever it was, it split the group up, more than it had already been. The last threads were cut and it faded. As if it had never existed.

Kakashi started avoiding her, which he actually had done, but much less, since their first mission. She hardly ever saw Naruto, and after the once or twice she finally did he was off again. And Sasuke had gone missing.

When she finally saw Naruto dragging Sasuke back into Konoha in his own hands something became clear for her. They would never join again, not in the same way. Despite her fantasy built on that small "everything will go back to normal" Kakashi had said that time.

When they finally would, there would still be one ninja avoiding contact, one with fury, hidden deeper than on the bottom of ocean, a missing nin, and one who was so clear on what had happened, that she was confused.

It didn't matter. Sasuke and Naruto may both have made a new life and Kakashi may have a new group; Sakura might be the chief of the hospital now.

And the only one who had the same eyes as before was her.

But maybe it was because people didn't bother looking closely enough.

**

You might want a break here, because as we all see, this above says something about determination and destiny. People do not actually read most words but "jump over" them because they often want to get to the more exciting places, the places where someone say's something important and that leads to something important which the reader misses because he "jumps it over".

It doesn't really matter, but what about our lives?

We can't just jump those over and skip to the exciting bit, we cant change the words to what pleases man's mind. We have to endure what comes to us.

It doesn't really matter.

I said something about destiny didn't I?

Did you jump it over?

Maybe you read it but related it to a word more like 'fate', because it feels better?

It doesn't really matter, but why did I write it?

Why did I tell you about how destiny changed their lives, and how it all started to change?

Was it because I wanted you to understand how Sakura lived every minute of it while we skip through it in a second?

**

Kakashi didn't look up when she left. He knew why she left. It wasn't just because of the fact they had slept with each other. It was the whole relationship, so fragile and shifting between them.

Because they hadn't decided to be team-mates; they hadn't even tried to be friends. People got to know each other when they began wanting to.

Maybe it was his fault entirely. All the things he had let happen between them; even more what he hadn't let happen. The times when he hadn't wanted to take the chance at.

How he felt comfortable when he created distance between them by doing things that confused her.

Slowly, knowing it was exactly 5 minutes and 69 seconds since she had walked away from him, through the exact same gate, he left the playground, nose for once not buried in his bright orange book.

**

Nineteenth century scientist Charles Darwin, in his book _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals_, described shame's effect as consisting of blushing, confusion of mind, downward cast eyes, slack posture, and lowered head

He described how humans are supposed to express themselves.

Of what Sakura could see he had only the second and the third symptom. But she hadn't yet learned to recognize that in that always straight, and a bit lackadaisical posture and expressionless face there was always a furrow of his brow when a thing like guilt appeared.

Then again Kakashi had never lived between the lines of "supposed to".

**

She knew he was sorry. That was why he had come to see her at all.

He was so full of shame he hadn't even looked her properly in her eyes and she knew that was a bad sign. It meant he didn't speak with her because he wanted to, because naturally he would just want to go bury himself, but he spoke with her to tell her he was sorry.

And that was just what she wanted, wasn't it? Kakashi wasn't a man to do something like that. He was too proper and caring and thoughtful to think about it at all. And now she knew he was suffering under that. She just couldn't help him right now. She couldn't tell him it was okay, and that they were both drunk. Partly because it wouldn't help him at all, but also because she couldn't believe that he had actually done it, and somehow deep inside, just like Kakashi thought, a growing mistrust and regret had been placed.

She tried to tell herself it wasn't his fault. That he hadn't intended it. But why had he let it go on then?

The gravel crunched under her heavy and swift footsteps of her favourite sandals.

She just wanted to go on forever, she wanted the way to her apartment to be as long as the grey November day years ago when for the first time a patient died under her care.

That had also been the day when Kakashi had bought her a drink for the first time.

It was also the first time he had actually taken her hands, and _looked_ at her, and not only at the seemingly incredibly interesting things behind her. He hadn't opened his Icha Icha book once in her presence that day, even thought it had just been for one and a half hours. If she had known she would have seen that furrow of his visible brow.

Sakura stared at the door when she finally arrived. She took a deep breath before placing her right hand gently on its knob, not even noticing that the ice had created small beautiful crystals on its surface, such ones she always love to discover in the edge of her windows in the morning.

She closed her eyes and then pressed it, and with that usual annoying click it opened.

Whatever she had expected when she returned wasn't this.

All of her clothes from the day before lay neatly in a stack on the table, and the misplaced chairs and other things had found their place again. The sheets had been changed and overall the apartment had clean smell, like the ones she would find when she came home from a long mission.

It looked like there hadn't been anyone there for months.

It just wasn't what she had expected. With empty eyes she sat down on the neatly made bed, and stared. It wasn't like she wasn't thankful. She had just expected that she was bound to clean up and deal with everything. And now there was nothing she could do she could only sit and think of nothing and everything.

She placed her warm face in her cold hands, trying to keep herself from crying once again.

It wasn't so much that they had had sex, because she was sure drunken Sakura had had the time of her life. But it was that Kakashi didn't feel anything for her. She had known him for so many years and now he had just used her like another of those one-night stands.

Sure he had tried, and failed, to apologize. But it didn't matter. He had still done it for nothing other than lust and it without knowing that her feelings towards him was something slightly different.

She mentally slapped herself for accusing him again. They had both been drunk. They wouldn't tell anyone, and they would just forget it.

Somehow she fell asleep and landed once again in that mixed together grey, black, meat-red nightmare land of her mind, and in a sleeping state that, against the original meaning of nature, didn't cure her headache or anything else.

Where silver-hair was suddenly streaked with blood, and clashed with the ground, while she tried to scream and move at all while screams that she too late realized wasn't her own filled the heating air around her.

**

She knew she'd always been crazy.

She didn't do what stood in nineteenth century scientist Charles Darwin book and began to consist of blushing, have confusion of mind, walk with downward cast eyes, with slack posture, and lowered head anyway.

Even thought she awfully often could describe the hurting feeling in her stomach as shame.

Maybe she just didn't know what she was supposed to look like when feeling that, she went ignorant and blissful by without, and also, naturally, she had jumped over that part in the article.

**

_I'm so sorry for being annoyingly late in updating, but I use to just write 'em and throw 'em out__._


End file.
